CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - MASON

 

I show up at the estate on Saturday in Lyssa’s Mercedes and without an invitation. I didn’t expect to drive right up to the house. I did my homework and I have first-hand knowledge of what his personal mercenary team can do. So when the security stops me at the end of the driveway, I tell them I’m just returning the car.

I’m sure they’ve got a picture of me on their little clipboards because the one in charge walks off to the side to call up to the house.

He stares at me under the shade of a tree, nodding his head. I raise my hand and say, “You tell Baylor I’m sending him a text.”

And then I send it.

Thirty seconds later I’m being waved into the circular driveway and a valet opens my door for me. I hand him the keys, straighten my smart-casual jacket, and walk up the front steps.

Her stepfather is waiting for me in the middle of the foyer, already excusing himself from his guests and panning his hand at the office doors.

We enter the office and he says, “I didn’t expect to see you here, Mason.”

“I guess you don’t know me as well as you thought.”

He closes the door and says, “What do you want?”

“You saw the picture. I found it in the backpack she brought to my apartment. I guess your mercenaries didn’t search my place very well. Because leaving that behind for me to find—huge mistake.”

“How much?” he says.

“What?”

“What will it take to make you go away, Macintyre? Another five million?”

I just blink at this asshole. Because he’s real. This fucker is real. “I want Lyssa.”

“The wedding is about to start. We don’t have time—”

“No, you don’t.” I cut him off. “You’re out of time, Baylor. Get Lyssa down here right now, or I’ll—”

“You’ll what?”

“You know what. You dressed her up like a fucking doll. Made her act like a teenager and…”

But I can’t even fucking say the words out loud. It’s too disgusting.

“Fucked her?” Baylor laughs. “No. I never fucked her. And if she told you that—”

“She didn’t tell me anything like that,” I say. “You got all your dirty secrets locked up real tight, don’t you?”

He sighs. Like he’s getting bored with me. “You’ve got it backwards, Mason. She wanted me. All these years, she wanted me. She sends me texts of herself. All the time. That whole week you were here with her? She was sexting me from that princess room. Opening her legs, and playing with herself, and—”

“Liar,” I snarl.

“I’m afraid not, son.” He pulls out his phone, taps the screen a few times, then thrusts it at me.

Photos of Lyssa doing exactly what he said.

Which I already knew about. Because I found her phone.

But that’s not the whole story. Not even close.

“Here,” he says. “Take it. Look through all of them. This goes back years.”

I take the phone and check the stream. “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, it does. You’ve been manipulating her a very long time. Maybe even since the day you met her.”

Which just makes me sick.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, son. I’ve done my best to protect my daughter.”

“Your stepdaughter,” I remind him.

“Whatever,” he says, waving his hand in the air. “The point is… she’s ill. Clearly you can see that from the texts she’s been sending me. She’s done other things, Macintyre. Disgusting things you don’t even want to know about.”

“Oh, I already know,” I say. “I found your files over there and read them all. Every fucking word.”

“Good,” he says, straightening the lapels on his tux. “Good. I’m glad you took the time to familiarize yourself with her. So you know what she’s done in the past. And yet… here you are. Why, Mason? Why are you bothering with this one, mentally ill girl?”

How far will he takes this?

All the way, I decide. This shit he’s running demands that much.

“Why didn’t you get her off?”

“Excuse me?”

“The charges,” I say.

“If you read her criminal files the way you claimed, then you know I did get her off, as you put it. Every single charge was handled.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I saw that. Except… it wasn’t. Not really.”

He squints his eyes at me.

“She was found guilty.”

“Because she was guilty.”

“But then sentencing. Nothing but fines and community service.”

“Because I care about her and didn’t want her to go to prison.”

“Yeah,” I say again. “She’d have gone away for a long time if you didn’t pay off that judge. And then what would you do?” I ask.

“Again, Mr. Macintyre, I’m lost. What is your point?”

“The house,” I say. “What would you do with this estate if Lyssa was in prison? I mean,” I have to shake my head and laugh. Because this man… he is like a goddamned pillar of evil. “If she was in prison she’d be outside your control. And if she was outside your control she wouldn’t be here as your little figurehead. And then how would you run this place?”

He stares at me for a few moments. He knows I know. I can see it in his eyes.

It’s not panic. Not yet. He probably thinks he can make me go away. In his world money makes everything go away.

“I think it’s time you leave,” he says.

Oh, no. His response is nothing as simple as just asking. He is making plans for me right now.

There is a bustle outside the office and I see Lyssa, walking down one of the staircases, dressed in… not the dress I bought her.

The pink one. The one she used to wipe come off her face.

“Lyssa,” I say, reaching for the door handle and pulling it open.

But Baylor’s firm hand on my arm stops me from rushing forward to grab her hand and take her out of here.

“Lyssa!” I call again.

She looks at me with blank eyes. Defeated eyes. Destined to live out her stepfather’s sick fantasy for the rest of her life.

But I say, “No.”

“Get back in here,” Baylor growls, closing the door again. “She’s a sick, sick girl. You knew this when you took the job. And you took advantage of her just as much as I do. I have it all on film. I have cameras everywhere.”

“Even up in the princess room?” I ask, raising one eyebrow. “Because I’d like to take a look at that footage. See if it matches what I have.”

He points his finger in my face and says, “You’re going to walk out of here and never come back, do you hear me? And if you utter one word of these lies to anyone, I will take you down. I will have your mother kicked out of that treatment facility, and I will bury her, and you, at the same time. Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong. And you’re in way over your head, son.”

I slap his finger out of my face.

“You saw the texts, you saw the pictures,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “I did. But I saw them first on her phone. Not yours.”

He just stares at me. Then swallows. Because he fucked up. And now he knows it. Didn’t he wonder how she was sending him pictures? Or is this asshole so full of himself he thought he was home free? He thought I was just another greedy motherfucker on his payroll and this was a done deal?

Well, surprise. I’m not.

He finally says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, but you do. You do. You’ve understood every fucking word I just spoke. I don’t think that criminal record is real. I think it’s even possible you encouraged her to drink and do drugs. Because you needed her to be Wild Thing, didn’t you? And then you set her up.”

He’s shaking his head, but not denying it. I don’t think Baylor is used to being called on his shit.

“I know what you’re doing with this house,” I say. It’s not entirely true. I’m guessing. But I’m a good guesser. So I continue without showing any signs of bluffing. “I know about the arranged marriage, and I know all about the photos, Baylor. Because you erased messages in your stream just in case anyone ever found out about your little obsession with your daughter. But you didn’t erase the pictures. Why?”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“I’ll take a stab at it. Two reasons, really. One. You’re a really sick, old fuck and wanted to keep them to look at. And two. You need them as evidence in case some enterprising wannabe detective—say me, for instance—came at you with the truth.”

He says nothing.

“I have them, Baylor. The texts you sent while I was here with her. Send me a photo, Princess. So I know you’re getting better.”

He almost guffaws. I bet he still thinks he’s safe. But he’s not.

“What’s wrong with being concerned for my daughter? I wanted to make sure you weren’t hurting her. I wanted proof that she was OK.”

“Oh, wow,” I say, running my fingers through my hair. “You are one persistent bullshitter, you know that?” I lean in. Get right in his face. And I say, “Did you ever give her a flip phone, Baylor? Hmm? How long ago was that?”

He just stares at me. A notch of worry finally appearing between his brows.

It was a rhetorical question. Because there were dates on those texts. I already know that phone was ten years old. I found a prepaid credit card in her backpack. The kind you use to re-up your minutes. And that’s when most of this finally started to make sense.

“Did she, perhaps, once upon a time, lose one of the burner phones you gave her to message you and your friends? Because if so, that’s the one I found. That’s the one she was using last week. It took me a while to figure this part out,” I say. “She told me that furniture was hers. She opened the desk drawer to show me all her teenage crap. And some time while she was upstairs because I had sent her to her room to be punished, she found that phone and that credit card. And she called her daddy.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at but—“

“Do you think she did it so I’d figure things out?” I ask. “Or did she do it because she was conditioned to? Did the simple act of placing her back in that room trigger something inside her? Some coping mechanism to get her through her new nightmare?”

“Again, Mr. Macintyre, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

“I don’t know. I doubt even she knows. Hell, maybe you don’t even know. But let’s forget about what we don’t know, OK? And concentrate on what we do know. You and your friends have a sick fetish for little kids. You used Lyssa to fulfill some disgusting fantasy.”

“I never touched her.” And still, even though I’m getting dangerously close to the truth, he laughs.

“You don’t need to touch a child to ruin a child,” I say. “And this place? What’s up with this place, Baylor? And if you say it’s a gift, I’ll punch you in the fucking face. Because it was never meant to be a gift. It was her prison. That’s why you made sure she had a very long criminal record. I admit, I was buying it until the pandering and prostitution stuff came up.” I shake my head. “You overplayed your hand there, asshole. I know what you plan to do with this house with twenty-one bedrooms. You’re gonna fill it with young kids. And invite your friends over for some fun. Close a few deals while you’re at it. And you were gonna make Lyssa run it, weren’t you? So if anyone ever found out, she’d take the fall.”

“You’re insane!” he bellows.

“Am I? I don’t think so. All those drug charges, maybe. Maybe all that really was all her own fuck ups. But you took it too far. Anyone who knows Lyssa would never accept that she sold her body for money. Or sold the bodies of others, for fuck’s sake. She went off the rails back when she was fifteen. Why? I don’t know yet. One day, when we’re far away from here and you’ve been locked up in prison for a while, maybe then she’ll want to talk about what you did to her. But it doesn’t matter. You saw a beautiful, wild girl and decided you could use her. Like you use everyone else. That you could buy her, just like you buy everyone else. And then one day she fought back, didn’t she? And you couldn’t take it. You can’t take anyone telling you no. So you decided to take it a million steps further than it needed to go. You decided to ruin her life again, and again, and again.”

He shakes his head.

“Did you have another one of these estates somewhere?” I ask. “Did it go under and that’s why you set Lyssa up as this prostitution mastermind? Or was this just revenge for you?”

He glares at me. “I saved her.”

“No, you killed her.”

“Don’t be dramatic. She’s right outside this office.”

“You killed her soul. And in my eyes, it’s the same thing.”

Baylor sighs. Still not convinced he’s in any danger. Even though I’ve very calmly spelled it out for him.

“I called her father,” I say, deciding it’s time to put this sick fuck out of his misery.

“I’m her father,” he growls.

“No,” I say. “You’re not. You blackmailed him to make him leave, didn’t you?” He opens his mouth, presumably to lie, because that’s all this asshole does. But I stop him. “He was a broken man back then. Penniless. Barely able to feed his family and then you came along and made… what’s the name for that?” I stop to think for a moment. “Oh yeah. An indecent proposal. You bought them both, didn’t you? He never forgave himself. He told me he tried to make contact a few years after he took the deal and you had him framed for attempted murder and assault. He spent most of his money on lawyers and a retrial and eventually the facts came to light and he was set free. He contacted Lyssa’s mother, used the rest of his money to buy that apartment and put it in Lyssa’s name when her mother died. He gave her an out and she took it. She was better. She was thriving and then you found me and told me to break her.”

I’m so angry now, I’m shaking.

“You hired me to bring her back here because you and your friends were done waiting.”

He doesn’t even bother to deny it. But he’s still not convinced he’s done yet. There’s still a slight glimmer of hope in his eyes that there’s a solution to this little snag in his plans.

“What are you trying to say?” he says. “You’re calling the police? You’re going to get me arrested? For what? Playing sex games with my stepdaughter? It’s not even illegal. She’s twenty-five years old.”

“Yeah, let’s just get to the point. I’m walking out of here with Lyssa right now. And you… well, you’re going to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Because her real father had no idea this was happening, but now that he does—”

Baylor laughs. “Now that he does… what?” And that last part definitely comes out as a threat.

I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. That maybe, deep down inside, this man had some decency.

But it has, and he doesn’t.

So I say, “You know what? Forget about him. Forget about all of that. I sent that whole text stream to a friend of mine—she’s actually here, covering the wedding for the paper.”

“What?”

“Yeah. So. You know. If you don’t let Lyssa leave with me right the fuck now my friend is gonna post that shit all over the internet. Forget about the police, and jail, and morals, and the right thing, and how one raises a daughter, and people coming after you another day. Because Baylor—you’re about to have a fucking PR nightmare on your hands in less than thirty minutes.”

His chest falls. Like he was holding his breath and he just let it out.

The saddest part of this whole confrontation is that he’s worried about his image. That’s what changes his mind in this moment. He’s worried about what people will think of him. How they will talk about him. He’s worried about Twitter headlines and talking heads on the news. He’s worried about stock prices.

Not her.

Not Lyssa.

When I look at her she’s still standing at the bottom of the steps. And even though she’s all the way across the room I can tell she’s crying.

I turn back to Baylor and say, “I’m walking out now. And I’m taking Lyssa with me. And if you ever come near us I will—”

“You’ll what?” he growls, mustering up one final act of defiance.

“You know what? Never mind that either. Feel free to come near us. Because then I’ll make sure you get what you deserve.”

I turn my back to him and open the door. Walk over to Lyssa and take her hand. She said something that first day that comes back to me as I do this.

So that’s what I say to her now.